CHARACTERS.

DESCRIPTION OF CHARACTERS.

LAURA MURDOCH, twenty-five years of age, is a type
not uncommon in the theatrical life of New York, and
one which has grown in importance in the profession
since the business of giving public entertainments
has been so reduced to a commercial basis.

At an early age she came from Australia to San Francisco.
She possessed a considerable beauty and an aptitude
for theatrical accomplishment which soon raised her
to a position of more or less importance in a local
stock company playing in that city. A woman of
intense superficial emotions, her imagination was without
any enduring depths, but for the passing time she
could place herself in an attitude of great affection
and devotion. Sensually, the woman had marked
characteristics, and, with the flattery that surrounded
her, she soon became a favourite in the select circles
which made such places as “The Poodle Dog”
and “Zinkand’s” famous. In general
dissipation, she was always careful not in any way
to indulge in excesses which would jeopardize her
physical attractiveness, or for one moment to diminish
her sense of keen worldly calculation.

In time she married. It was, of course, a failure.
Her vacillating nature was such that she could not
be absolutely true to the man to whom she had given
her life, and, after several bitter experiences, she
had the horror of seeing him kill himself in front
of her. There was a momentary spasm of grief,
a tidal wave of remorse, and then the peculiar recuperation
of spirits, beauty and attractiveness that so marks
this type of woman. She was deceived by other
men in many various ways, and finally came to that
stage of life that is known in theatrical circles
as being “wised up.”

At nineteen, the attention of a prominent theatrical
manager being called to her, she took an important
part in a New York production, and immediately gained
considerable reputation. The fact that, before
reaching the age of womanhood, she had had more escapades
than most women have in their entire lives was not
generally known in New York, nor was there a mark
upon her face or a single coarse mannerism to betray
it. She was soft-voiced, very pretty, very girlish.
Her keen sense of worldly calculation led her to believe
that in order to progress in her theatrical career
she must have some influence outside of her art and
dramatic accomplishment; so she attempted, with no
little success, to infatuate a hard-headed, blunt and
supposedly invincible theatrical manager, who, in
his cold, stolid way, gave her what love there was
in him. This, however, not satisfying her, she
played two ends against the middle, and, finding a
young man of wealth and position who could give her,
in his youth, the exuberance and joy utterly apart
from the character of the theatrical manager, she
adopted him, and for a while lived with him. Exhausting
his money, she cast him aside, always spending a certain
part of the time with the theatrical manager.
The young man became crazed, and, at a restaurant,
tried to murder all of them.